Friday, March 29, 2024
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Rescue Story: TNR at the Trailer Park

eartipped gray cat
Gray boy says thanks!

At my visit to the trailer park to pick up one lucky tabby, her caretaker told me about other cats in the park and I saw plenty of them, a person up the road who was feeding, and offered help if anyone wanted to try to help the cats with TNR. I let a few people in HCMT know about the situation knowing I wouldn’t be able to work on it on my own if at all with my open house and home repairs. Last week Margo messaged that she had spots in the shelter spayathon and was headed out to start trapping the next day. I contacted the caretaker and let her know, and she contacted others in the park.

tiny kitten
Tiny kitten.

I am very grateful for HCMT and its resources and volunteers who can undertake a big and ongoing project like this one, as cold weather rolled in. Margo needed trap covers and I always have donated sheets so I drove some out. She had found this tiny kitten all alone and later trapped two kittens in the same place at the same age; she may have unknowingly trapped the mother, and while we prefer to keep moms and kittens together and regularly foster feral moms with kittens, there were so many cats around it was impossible to match them up. This little bit and siblings went to one of our kitten fosters for some bottle feeding and canned kitten food. In all, at least 10 adult cats and cattens were trapped and returned, some of them friendly like the gray guy above and below, and quite a few kittens of age to socialize who will be vetted and up for adoption soon.

TNR is far more than simply trapping, neutering, vaccinating and returning cats to their caretakers. It’s a community project. The people in the trailer park who were feeding the cats being trapped were very thankful for the offer of help. As Margo and Alexa were trapping, other residents came over and drove by and thanked them and offered help. That’s not always the case, but thank goodness it was for these cats.

Cats really can’t survive on their own outdoors. They can live safely outdoors with someone who feeds them, provides some shelter and at minimum spays or neuters them and provides a rabies vaccine through TNR.

There are several colonies in this trailer park, this one numbering at least 30. This will be a long-term project, but in the end, before winter, many cats will be spayed or neutered so there won’t be kittens born over winter to freeze, or in the spring to reproduce more next year, friendly kittens will be fostered for adoption, the community will be organized to help care for the cats in the neighborhood. That’s TNR at its best, helping people help cats.

Margo trapped this friendly cat in the trailer park and over the weekend she asked if I could return him. He has someone who feeds him and cares for him, and maybe someday he’ll get to go live indoors. But for now he’s neutered and he’s not contributing to the population anymore. We’re helping the people out there with winter shelters, food, and other things for the cats that we’re spaying and neutering. Typically when you open a trap a feral cat may hesitate for a bit but will race out as if they’ve shot out of a cannon and disappear. Not this guy. He was too cute! He tried to follow me, but then he realized he was home and stayed.

Help HCMT and Pittsburgh C.A.T.!

I’d love it if you had the chance to donate even $5.00 to HCMT to help with this mom cat and the others I’m working with, and the many more HMCT and Pittsburgh CAT have rescued right off the streets and are providing care for. Here are a few opportunities!

You know that Pittsburgh C.A.T. is the rescue I volunteer with, but even when I’m rescuing cats and kittens for others they still provide support to me in the form of traps and transport, fostering, food, kitten formula, and low-cost clinic and surgery appointments. I couldn’t help anyone without their support. Rescuing adult cats to foster and adopt to a forever home can be expensive depending on their condition, but rescuing kittens is always expensive because they need complete vetting, often they are orphaned and need formula and bottle feeding for weeks, they often develop illnesses or conditions specific to young kittens and they eat A LOT. We don’t adopt kitten out until they are spayed and neutered and have all age-appropriate vaccines, so we make a substantial investment in their future.

Right now, Pittsburgh C.A.T. is in need of a few baby scales for fosters. Weighing kittens is an important part of their care. Check the Amazon Wishlist https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1DJBKJ6Y7IMR8?ref_=wl_share

Here’s what you can do:

  • Visit www.homelesscat.org/donate to find a list of donation possibilities. HCMT is a 501c3 organization and donations are tax deductible, Pittsburgh C.A.T. is our “sister organization” formed to foster and rehome the socialized or socializable cats we rescue, same people, different activities. You can make a donation to HCMT and designate it for care through Pittsburgh C.A.T.
  • Donate Amazon gift cards to [email protected]. Because our cats are fostered in homes all around the Pittsburgh area, gift cards enable us to send supplies directly to fosters!
  • You can also buy supplies through our Amazon wishlist
  • Or donate cash through Paypal ([email protected]) or Venmo (Pittsburghcat).

Gifts featuring cats you know! Visit Portraits of Animals

AfterDinnerNap-Etsy

Feline Gifts from Portraits of Animals!

cat refrigerator magnets
Sitting Pretty Refrigerator magnets.

I worked out the manufacture of my own “die” or basically a cookie cutter to use for creating consistent shapes of one of my sketches. Each magnet is hand-painted. Read more.



Copyright

All images and text used on this site are copyrighted to Bernadette E. Kazmarski unless otherwise noted and may not be used without my written permission, although links to your site are more than welcome and are shared. Please ask if you are interested in using and image or story in a print or internet publication. If you are interested in purchasing a print of an image or a product including it, check my animal and nature website Portraits of Animals to see if I have it available already. If you don’t find it there, visit Ordering Custom Artwork for more information on a custom greeting card, print or other item.


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Weekly schedule of features:

Sunday: Essays, Pet Loss, Poetry, The Artist’s Life

Monday: Adoptable Cats, TNR & Shelters

Tuesday: Rescue Stories

Wednesday: Commissioned Portrait or Featured Artwork

Thursday: New Merchandise

Friday: Book Review, Health and Welfare, Advocacy

Saturday: Your Backyard Wildlife Habitat, Living Green With Pets, Creating With Cats

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Bernadette

From health and welfare to rescue and adoption stories, advocacy and art, factual articles and fictional stories, "The Creative Cat" offers both visual and verbal education and entertainment about cats for people who love cats, pets and animals of all species.

One thought on “Rescue Story: TNR at the Trailer Park

  • best fizhez two ewe each N everee one oh ewe catz N kittenz; may ST Francis watch over ewe all, 24.7 !! 🙂 ♥♥ 984 pawz UP two everee purrson steppin up ta help ~~~~ be blessed ♥♥♥ 🙂

    Reply

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